Artificial Intelligence: Hype vs. Hope

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often touted as a transformational solution to many health care challenges. Will AI deliver or is it all hype?

Experts from across the Brigham will participate in a panel that aims to address these questions and concerns: How will AI change patient care delivery and impact healthcare providers? How is AI being used in research today at BWH? What are the key challenges with AI and how do we overcome them to achieve the promise of AI in healthcare?

About the Speakers

Adam Landman, MD, MS, MIS, MHS, is Brigham and Women’s Health Care’s (BWHC) Chief Information Officer (CIO). As CIO, Dr. Landman is responsible for maintaining a focus on excellence while developing system-wide strategic IT initiatives, with the goal of evolving the next generation of information systems across the BWHC enterprise.

Dr. Landman is board certified in Emergency Medicine and Clinical Informatics. He joined BWH in 2010 as director of Clinical Information in the Department of Emergency Medicine, where he led the project to move BWH ED clinicians from paper-based to electronic documentation. He also led the team that built the CliniCam mobile app, a secure and convenient image sharing app for acquiring digital images and storing them in the electronic health record, which was made available for all clinical users in the hospital.

He previously served the hospital as the Chief Medical Information Officer for Health Information Innovation & Integration (CMIO), where he oversaw a range of BWHC Partners eCare (PeC) responsibilities, such as the local implementation of the Sunquest laboratory information system and integration with Epic, with a novel positive patient identification specimen collection solution that has reduced laboratory specimen errors for inpatients. He had also been driving efforts at both the local and industry levels to improve the experience of hospital patients and visitors, strengthening the innovation culture at BWHC through programs like the Innovation Hub, and collaborating with external digital health companies and start-ups.

Dr. Landman received his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMNDJ)-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and trained in Emergency Medicine at UCLA Medical Center. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at Yale University, where he also received his masters of Health Sciences. He completed graduate degrees in Information Systems and Health Care Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University.

Dr. Calum MacRae is the Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also an Associate Member at the Broad Institute and a Principal Faculty Member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. A cardiologist, geneticist and developmental biologist, he has trained in Edinburgh, London and Boston. He came to Harvard Medical School for a fellowship in cardiovascular genetics in 1991. He continued his research training at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1996 with focus on developmental biology. He returned to Brigham and Women’s in 2009 and rose to chief of cardiovascular medicine in 2014.

His research interest is in understanding the fundamental mechanisms of disease using human studies and complementary efforts combining systems level modeling with empiric high-throughput biology in the zebrafish. His lab uses automated screens in fish to define the genetic architecture of disease and to explore gene-drug (or environment) interactions through the interrogation of large-scale chemical libraries. His clinical interests include genomic medicine, innovation in phenotyping and the redesign of clinical care. Under his leadership, the Brigham Cardiology team has successfully engaged in a number of innovative collaborations in cardiovascular care optimization with a wide range of industry partners.

In October 2016, Dr. MacRae became the recipient of One Brave Idea, a $75 million 5-year research award to study coronary heart disease and its consequences. This unique team based program is funded by the American Heart Association, Verily and Astra Zeneca. His proposal was chosen amongst a group of 349 applicants from 22 countries who sought the project to identify an entirely new approach to eradicate the number one killer of Americans. His visionary approach holds promise for addressing a broad set of diseases.

Dr. Washko is an Associate Physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His faculty appointment is in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Medicine. He is a clinical investigator and has been involved in multiple local, national and international investigations focused on the clinical, epidemiologic and genetic aspects of lung diseases such as COPD and pulmonary fibrosis. As part of this effort Dr. Washko’s team has used advanced machine learning techniques to process research acquired data. This group is co-directed by Dr Washko and Dr San Jose Estepar who is an Associate Professor of Radiology in the Department of Radiology. Their joint efforts are focused on detecting and validating image based biomarkers that can be used for disease detection, stratification, prognostication and intermediate study endpoints. Recent advances in image processing is now allowing them to focus their efforts to integrate image analytics into clinical care.

Dr. Andriole is an Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and is currently the Director of Research Strategy and Operations at the MGH & BWH Center for Clinical Data Science (CCDS) (https://clindatsci.com). She studied Biomedical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering and Medicine at Duke University and Yale University, respectively, and did postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Departments of Radiology. At UCSF, Dr. Andriole was instrumental in designing, building and implementing picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) before they became commercial entities. Her research has involved technical as well as clinically-relevant developments in medical informatics, PACS, digital radiography, image processing and analysis, business analytics, and machine learning. Dr. Andriole has developed and taught several formal courses, directed fellowships in biomedical imaging and informatics, and mentored more than 60 trainees. She has served in multiple leadership roles for the Society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM), currently serves on the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Radiology Informatics Committee, the American College of Radiology (ACR) Innovation Advisory Council and is the Senior Scientist for Education for the ACR Data Science Institute. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Digital Imaging and the Journal of Medical Imaging. Dr. Andriole has been elected a member of the Academy of Harvard Medical School, and inducted into the SIIM College of Fellows.